Rhodes has always been more comfortable playing a chameleon rather than standing alone in the spotlight. That doesn't mean he takes the craft of acting any less seriously, though.

"The best actors are the best listeners," he said. "It's about being helpful to other people, because as an actor you can't act by yourself."

There are a lot of elements that go into being a competent professional actor, Rhodes says.

"The more you know about everybody else's job, the better you are as an actor."

Rhodes will pick up his Sam Payne Lifetime Achievement Award Friday alongside fellow actor Babz Chula. Chula is being recognized with a Sam Payne Award for humanity, artistic merit and encouragement of new talent.

Chula will add her Sam Payne, named for one of Canada's most respected professional actors, to a trophy collection that already includes Leo, Genie, New York Film Festival, Vancouver Film Critics and Jessie Theatre awards.

Rhodes is only too happy to share the limelight. Acting, he insists, is a process of cooperation and collaboration.

"Not just a collaboration between cast members but a collaboration between the entire production company, the crew, everyone. They bring their own energy, and when everybody is doing that, it makes it easier on everyone. It's about respect, about making the other actor look good."

Rhodes, a Winnipeg-born, Vancouver-based actor who got his start as a contract player performing bit parts in '60s classics like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the original Mission: Impossible, is perhaps best known for his seven years on Da Vinci's Inquest as Det. Leo Shannon, playing opposite Ian Tracey.

Rhodes played the debonair Phillip Chancellor Sr. on The Young and the Restless for several seasons in the mid-1970s before, feeling a little young and restless himself, he moved on to other roles.

He played escaped convict Dutch Leitner on Norman Lear's groundbreaking soap-opera spoof Soap in 1977, then returned to B.C. to play a doctor in the family adventure series Danger Bay.

More recently, he has appeared in a recurring role as the chain-smoking, fatalistic Dr. Cottle on Battlestar Galactica.

Rhodes says he watched the Academy Awards, but in general he's not one to obsess over which actor wins which award in any given award show.

"I really think there should be an award for the best actor in a lousy script," he said. "That would be worth winning. Basically, it's about the script. If you have a really good part, any decent actor is going to look pretty good in it."

Rhodes recalled a quip by the English filmmaker Richard Attenborough, around the time Attenborough won the Oscar for directing Gandhi.

"He said, 'I hire really good actors and then I just show up on time. That's the secret to directing.' There's a lot of truth in that. It's hard to do good work if you're simply working on your own."

Rhodes feels fortunate to have earned a living working close to home in his later years. Canada's film and TV production industry works on a small scale, in part because there isn't enough money in domestic film distribution and TV advertising to sustain a larger industry.

The real opportunities — and most of the well-paying jobs — are in Los Angeles. That is why so many young Canadian actors try their luck there first, as Rhodes did early in his career, when he landed make-or-break roles in The Young and the Restless and Soap.

The B.C.-based Danger Bay, which ran for six seasons between 1985-'90, enabled Rhodes to come home, and stay.

Rhodes played the patriarch Dr. Grant "Doc" Roberts, a marine veterinarian and father of two teenager children, in the show. Danger Bay was conceived as an informal companion show to The Beachcombers during that show's final seasons.

Danger Bay would eventually air on the U.S. Disney Channel, becoming one of the first homegrown series to make the jump to a U.S. network. CTV and Paul Haggis' Due South would follow four years later, in 1994.

"Our industry is very tiny, " Rhodes explained. "To survive as an actor in this country, without a day job, isn't easy. So often, you get one crack at it and that's it. There a lot of talented Canadian actors, writers, musicians and directors working in the United States, because of the population base. It's simply a question of numbers. There is just not enough work to keep talented people here.

"I've been very fortunate in my career. I'd be the first to admit it. Now, I'm just waiting for the next one to come along."

The role of Battlestar Galactica's Dr. Cottle was one of those happy accidents that happen every so often in a journeyman actor's life, Rhodes admits.

He was originally slated to appear in a single episode, in the series' first season, as Galactica's replacement chief medical officer. The program's U.S. producers liked what they saw — Rhodes still has no idea what, looking back — and he found himself being written into more scripts. Dr. Cottle took on a life of his own, quite literally.

Dr. Cottle's constant smoking — a cigarette dangling out of his mouth even as he performs surgery, in some scenes — was another accident of happenstance. The character was sketchily drawn in the beginning, Rhodes recalled. There was just the one writers' notation: "He smokes.'

"It was my impression they were making up the character as they went along," Rhodes recalled.

He decided to take Dr. Cottle's smoking to a crazy level, lighting up during his every waking moment. The habit stuck, and smoking became one of Dr. Cottle's defining gestures. In a dystopian sci-fi drama rooted in a dark, post-apocalyptic future where humanity's on the run from a ruthless enemy, no one seemed to notice — or be overly concerned — by the incongruity of a doctor smoking in the operating theatre, or the glamourization of an unhealthy, potentially death-dealing habit.

Battlestar Galactica's two-part, three-hour series finale airs on March 13 and 20. Naturally, Rhodes wouldn't say how the cult series ends, but he did say Dr. Cottle survives the final episode.

Donnelly Rhodes: Down-to-earth Vancouver actor sets off for another universe in Battlestar Galactica

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